sanctuary
by Anastasia-G
Summary: Imprisoned for centuries in the dungeons below the cathedral of Notre-Dame, Niklaus Mikaelson gave up any hope for freedom long ago, until one night he hears a voice lifted in an ancient song, a young witch's prayer for for all supernatural kind. (Klonnie meets The Hunchback of Notre-Dame...sort of. Details inside)
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N: PLEASE READ. **This is not quite a "Hunchback of Notre-Dame" AU. Klaus isn't quite Quasimodo and Bonnie isn't quite Esmeralda but there's shades of Hugo's characters in both of them, I think. In order to tell this story I've had to take Notre-Dame out of the time and history we're familiar with into an alternate chronology, one that blends with TVD mythology somewhat and also remixes some of my favorite scenes from the Disney adaptation (yes, I said it, only God can judge me) as well as from Hugo's novel. The story of Qetisyah and Silas is referenced here (you should glance at the TVD wiki if you've forgotten it) as well as Ayanna, and Esther, and the Mikaelson children, but with some important differences: Bonnie is not a descendant of Qetsiyah and Ayanna, and Esther isn't the one who Bound Klaus' wolf. This is going to be a 4 chapter fic, quick and dirty if you will, and I've already written most of chapter 3 and 4. I feel really vulnerable about posting this, because I'm very emotionally attached to the themes and I'm going through a difficult and stressful period in my life, and I was worried that y'all would think I'm corny as hell lol. But in any case, do let me know your thoughts in the reviews. This fic was, as always, inspired also by the work of the many other wonderful writers who populate this fandom._

 _P.S: **thefudge** just posted a klonnie fic called  "count the stars and you will know", and since it left me a wreck of feels I can't recommend it heartily enough for the rest of you. _

* * *

**Chapter 1: the witch's prayer**

* * *

It began with a witch's prayer, as in the old stories.

It came ringing faintly down, past the stone stairways and wooden doors, past the iron cells with their skeletal prisoners, past the scurrying rats and pockets of filth, down, down deep into the cellars of Notre-Dame.

" _Bring them here_

 _To the light of God_

 _O Mother! Hear their cry"_

The cells around him shuddered with the pitiful hums and hopeful cries of starved beasts bearing the facsimile of men and women, thinking a redeemer had come. They had been imprisoned here for centuries, weakened by the vermin blood they were forced to consume, stripped of the rings that once allowed them to walk in sunlight, bound by chains hewn from the rocks below the cathedral that had the power to stall their strength.

And he, he had been imprisoned even longer than they.

" _Do not forget them_

 _The outcasts,_

 _The cursed ones_

 _Mother, save your children!"_

The prayer to Qetsiyah, Mother of Outcasts, had not been heard within the walls of Notre-Dame for over five hundred years.

The others thought of salvation. He thought only of blood, of his freedom, of shedding these chains and leaving this accursed place behind forever.

Niklaus, son of Mikael, who had one been Hybrid, now only a vampire, closed his eyes, let his ears talk to his mind, let sound and echo trace an image of the singer in the dark. A girl, slender and alone. The priests and witch-hunters were all abed at this hour. If they heard her scream, it would be too late.

" _Bring them here_

 _To the light of God_

 _O Mother! Bring them here"_

He shuffled to his feet, dragging his chains behind him. His gaolers had decided to allow him to roam the halls of the dungeons. His chains, unlike the others, were not bound to the rock but hung from his neck and ankles. They allowed him to roam as free as he liked within the walls of Notre-Dame.

It suited the Hunters' purposes for the others to see that even Niklaus Mikaelson, once mighty Hybrid, was imprisoned here. Once his fellow prisoners' hands had reached out through the iron bars of each cell as he passed, imploring him to set them free, praising his strength they had heard in stories. But, as the months passed and they saw how he shared their fate, the pleas turned sour, and it was spit now and curses they flung at him.

" _Bring them here_

 _To the light of God_

 _O Mother! Save your children."_

Niklaus walked through the corridors of filth and misery, past their cries and epithets, until he found the broken column that led to a hole in the rafters, through which he could climb and crawl with the rats, by the mighty bells whose ringing was used to drive the prisoners to madness, past the north rose window with its glass petals of light that Silas the Betrayer, who the priests now called The Faithful One, had built with his own hands, down to the vestibule where the small, clear voice was singing still.

" _Mother, I too am starving,_

 _I too shall come_

 _Aye, I too shall come."_

The scent of her blood nearly undid him, like a blow to his miserable, empty stomach. He could smell the magic in her. Foolish, reckless thing, to have wandered here, amid the Hunters and the beasts.

He dropped to the stone floor behind her quiet as a cat. She stood gazing up at the statue of Qetsiyah, who the priests now called the Penitent One, who had once been hailed Mother of Outcasts. He had been a boy when he first laid eyes upon that stone face with its jeweled crown and resolute mouth, the arms that sheltered a brave child. In those years, flowers and candles and perfume and coins were heaped at the feet of the Great Mother. Pilgrims from all corners of the world, fleeing witch hunters in their homelands, came here to thank her, to be sheltered. Even the priests and hunters who had turned Notre-Dame into a prison, who did not permit any of the Impure to walk its floors, even they did not dare defame her likeness.

But Niklaus thought no more of prayers and offerings. His every sense thrummed with one goal.

She turned, her face dappled in the candlelight, to see his fangs break his gums. A slip of a girl, barefoot, with a fine web of shawl clutched around thin shoulders.

If his visage - more beast than man, teeth bared and eyes black with hunger - frightened her, she did not scream. Instead, she bared her arm. There was a flash of silver from a cleverly hidden dagger, and then her skin was open and riverine with blood. Hunger roared through him. Spittle ran from his mouth.

He sank to his knees.

"Here," she beckoned gently, the way one offers bread to a beggar. "You are hungry, aren't you?"

He couldn't think, couldn't breathe. He could only crawl with his tongue on the silted blood, crawl to where it pooled at her feet, crawl, crawl to the mouth of the river.

He had not imagined the path to freedom like this, lowly and debased, reduced only to an animal need. He wanted to hate her for making it so.

But when his lips fastened around the blessed wound on her arm, he thought- he thought everything and nothing at all.

Her blood gushed down his throat. He tasted sunlight, and fields of wheat turning golden in the sun, and the waters of the Seine kissed by rain. He tasted the leather spine of a book in his hands, a long afternoon and fresh paint on a blank canvas.

He tasted the sky, the sky, the sky.

She moaned and swayed on her feet. He snatched her up savagely in his arms, his mouth fastening on her neck, and drank deep, deep enough to feel his bones shift.

At length her heartbeat began to slow. For one so young, so seeming-fragile, it had fought long and bravely.

Niklaus withdrew his fangs. She was cradled in his arms, his mouth ran with her blood. They were a perverse mirror of the statue that sheltered them. He had meant to leave her there, an innocent bled to death at Qetsiyah's feet, the cruel price of freedom.

The old pilgrims used to say that the Mother of Outcasts could see into your soul, make you anew, wash you clean. He had no such illusions any longer.

But the girl, this witch, had opened her veins for him. And so in Qetsiyah's shadow he opened his, dripped his blood over her lips.

When her wounds began to close he laid her gently at the feet of the Mother, smoothed her hair from her face. He wanted to remember her just as she was. Not in the distantly beautiful way of saints, no. Her light was too jagged, like broken glass. He wanted to remember her unfinished, and throat-clenchingly bright.

She raised a bloody hand to his face. "The others - below. Help them."

He heard the stir of footsteps and voices. The prisoners underground were clamoring, no doubt having caught the scent of her blood, the same blood that coursed through his veins.

"I am sorry, little witch."

He did not linger to see hope die in her face. He ran, tearing off his shackles as he did so. The magic in her blood pulsed inside him, like stars in a night sky he had not seen in centuries.

He ripped the bolts from the door and rushed outside, tore through the streets like a madman, drunk on fresh air, blinded by the sun.

The sun...

Dawn had come while he fed from the witch and lingered to heal her. Dawn shy and golden on his skin, leaving him unharmed.

Her blood had Unbound the hybrid curse. She had freed him of the last of his chains.

 _Bring them here_

 _To the light of God_

The bells pealed like thunder in the distance. He could hear the soldiers feet, marching, marching to Notre-Dame.

 _O Mother! Save your children_

One prisoner lost, another gained.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: return to notre-dame**

* * *

He could not leave the city without watching her die. He owed her this much, at least.

Seven days since his escape from Notre-Dame and he lived as a shadow, feeding on drunken noblemen who lingered outside the brothels, collecting enough coin to bribe his way to the docks. Coastal folk did not ingest vervain so frequently as the Parisians, and he could commandeer a ship. It was far easier to evade the Hunters by water rather than land. Once he was far enough from Paris, he could reinvent himself. Begin the search for Rebekah and Marcel. They had fled the city before his imprisonment, and had implored him to join them, but he had been too foolish, too reckless with his own power. If he found them again, if they were alive, he vowed things would be different. He would apologize to Rebekah, buy her a hundred thousand silk dresses if she so desired. And he would go riding with Marcel in the countryside, like when they were young men sure of the world's bounty.

But all these hopes he pushed deep into the recesses of his heart.

First, he had to watch her die. It would be a penance, he told himself, to watch, and remember the flames eating her body. The charred memento of his liberty.

The appointed hour of her burning drew near and he made his way to the square along with the masses. He'd heard the stories, they buzzed around him even now in gnat-like whispers: how she had fought, bested nearly half a dozen Hunters with her magic before they finally clapped her in irons. There had been riots throughout the city, witches and warlocks and vampires and werewolves, and their human comrades too, emerging from hiding, into the light, openly denouncing the rule of the Hunters.

Niklaus jostled his way to the square and saw, around the pyre that had been prepared for the witch, under the light of the moon, cages and cages of the imprisoned, chained to each other, miserable and emaciated, rolled out in droves to watch their last hope die. And he knew then that for the first time in countless years, the tyrants were truly afraid.

And there in the shadow of Notre-Dame, they brought her forth, shackled and staggering. Two Hunters moved her roughly to the center of the square and bound her to the pyre. Niklaus could see the way her head drooped a little. They had no doubt force fed her potions to dull her magic. He remembered the bitter poison they'd poured down his throat to bind his Wolf, the grim faces of his brothers in their priestly collars, Elijah and Finn, holding him in place. Oh, how he longed to know where they were laid to rest, so he could spit on their graves.

A priest approached the witch, his young face shiny and arrogant as a new coin. Niklaus thought he remembered his name from the evening prayers. Jeremiah.

The priest prayed over her for long moments. He saw the witch raise her head to look at the star-strewn sky. He recalled the taste of her blood, the ruby river of her arm. Her voice saying, _Here_.

She had offered herself without question or complaint. Her only request had been on behalf of the others.

"Bonnie Bennett, do you now repent the sin of trespassing and witchcraft, and submit to the light of the Lord?" Jeremiah reached out, his hand curving around her jaw, and bade her reply.

The witch smiled. Then she spat in his face.

Her eyes burned like green fire. There were hollow laughs and faint cheers from the crowded cages.

Niklaus felt acid in his throat again. His mother had brought him and Rebekah here as children, fleeing from her brute of a husband. They had journeyed in secret, in boats and by mule, only to be accosted by Hunters mere steps from the sanctuary of Notre-Dame. The Hunters had broken Esther's neck and snatched him up by the arm. He had spat and howled and at last sunk his blunt teeth into the one of their hands. Ayanna had burst through the doors then, channeling wind and fire, had scooped them up and carried them inside and dared the Hunters to follow. One and twenty years he lived and grew in the cathedral Silas the Great had built for his lover, Qetisyah. He had been Turned there, given his first Daylight Ring by Ayanna herself. Before the Dark Times. Before they turned Notre Dame into a prison.

The smell of burning wood rose in the air. They had lit her pyre.

The prisoners howled and wept in their cages. Niklaus closed his eyes. He thought of Rebekah and Marcel, pictured them laughing under an apple tree somewhere. Perhaps they would hear word of him, of what he had done, the way you smell smoke from the hearth fire after a long day in the fields. Perhaps that would be enough, for him and for them.

He summoned the Wolf into his blood. He leaped into the fray.

The Hunters and their foot soldiers never saw him coming until it was too late. The long years of feeding on rats, the nights spent draining rich bastards in dank alleyways, had only whetted his appetite. He cut through them like a scythe, spraying fountains of their blood that rained rubies on the desperate tongues of the imprisoned. And in all that crimson melee he kept his senses trained on one thing and one thing only.

He killed the young priest with his teeth, ripping out his throat and spitting it on the flaming logs. Through fire and smoke he reached for her and tore the ropes from her limbs. She fell into his grasp, coughing and faint.

Her hands clutched at his shoulders. "The cathedral," she urged, "it's our only chance."

"Are you mad?" he shouted, wiping blood from his eyes. "We have to get out of the city, to the ports-,"

"NO," she tugged his shirt with desperate strength. "Notre-Dame will protect us, I know it-,"

"You are out of your mind, witch-,"

"It is the only way! _Please!_ "

The square below them was seething carnage. Vampires and wolves and humans, tearing into their gaolers, the Hunters tearing in return. Even if he could get through this crowd unscathed, the witch in his arms would not. Niklaus turned his gaze upward, as when he was a boy, where the looming towers of Notre-Dame embraced the heavens. A fierce determination rose in his breast, fueled by the rage he had thought his imprisonment had squelched.

By all the gods, for the sake of that boy he had once been, he refused to live the rest of his immortal days in fear.

"Hold on to me, little witch."

She clasped her arms around his neck. "I don't know your name..."

"Niklaus," he supplied, carrying her to the edge of the scaffold and squinting through the smoke.

" _Victory of the people_ ," she murmured, dropping a light kiss to his cheek. Like she knew him. Like _she_ had waited for _him_ , instead of the other way around.

He grunted a response and steadied her in his arms, then leapt into the air, using the speed of both Wolf and Vampire to propel him forward and up.

* * *

She was only a feather in his arms, but somehow he felt winged.

Before the hundreds of watching eyes he scaled stone and glass, leaping from spire to balcony with inhuman grace, never allowing the small witch's body to slip from his grasp.

Vaguely, he grew aware that they were being cheered on. The prisoners, shouting and screaming until their voices coalesced into a single, victorious cry from the depths of history.

" _SANCTUARY!"_

They rattled the cages that held them, the chains that bound their hands and feet. They had forgotten for a moment their hunger, their pain, their shackles. They beaconed him with a blinding roar.

" _SANCTUARY!"_

And it seemed to them the very stones of Notre-Dame trembled in answer, that the sky itself stood still, that the bones of the dead clattered beneath the earth. The cry of their ancient mother burned every throat, rising more fierce than the witch hunters' pyre, longer than the memory of imprisonment, deeper than any physical pain.

 _"SANCTUARY!"_

He climbed on, her breath feathering his neck.


	3. Chapter 3

_**A/N:** Warning - this chapter is ultra, ultra nerdy. The inscription Klaus reads at Qetsiyah's statue is a quote from the English translation of Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". And, in case y'all weren't totally tired of me and **thefudge** constantly blowing smoke up each other's ass, I should also mention this chapter owes a lot of inspiration to her fic "Hell With You". _

_Thank you for your reviews and for giving this fic a chance. This has taken hold of me like a ghost and so I'm trying to wrap it up so I can update my other fics lol. Do let me know your thoughts!_

* * *

 **Chapter 3: a cathedral of bones**

* * *

Notre-Dame had been retaken by the imprisoned, for the time being. The cathedral hummed with voices and movement, new songs and old prayers, the embattled preparing for daybreak. By sunrise, the Hunters and their militia would be at the doors once more.

He found her, again, at Qetsiyah's feet. She was staring at the plaque where the priests had marred the graven words.

She heard him approach this time. "What did it say...do you remember?"

He gazed up at the crowned figure, remembering gold and lapis and the perfume of prayers. The witch beside him was no towering icon. She was only a candleflame, gaunt as hope.

He recited quietly. "' _A woman so beautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin, and have chosen her for His mother, and have wished to be born of her, if she had been in existence when He was made man.'"_

A maiden's smile curved her mouth, but mischief danced in her eyes. "Is that _really_ what it said?"

"Just so," he affirmed, cupping her warm face.

"Such blasphemy. No wonder the priests scratched it out," she teased, resting her cheek into his hand, soft as a dove, before a pensive look stole across her features. "Did he really love her, do you think? Silas, I mean."

"I think Notre-Dame is answer enough."

She frowned, "But he denounced it, gave it over to the Hunters. It was two hundred years before Ayanna and her sisters won it back. And by then, Qetisyah herself was nothing more than bones."

He took her by the hand, led her to the north rose window and pointed. "Look. Silas made that window, sorted each piece of glass in his own hand. When lit by the full sun, even my eyes cannot easily gaze into its brilliance. They say, it is like looking into the eye of God."

She gave him a curious look. "But you do not believe in their God, surely?"

"No," he said, flatly. "I believe in the immortality of truth. I believe that art, true art, is incapable of lying. What did Silas create with that Petrova wife he was cowed into wedding, hmm? A child that died before it could walk? A country estate long since trampled by forest?" He scoffed. "Who remembers their small, daily life? If they smiled or wept or made love, if they wiped each other's tears? Look around you, little witch." He swept an arm at the jeweled window, the arching roof, the pillars and corridors and the stone floor swept by the feet of a thousand years of pilgrims. "Love is what endures."

She came to stand beside him and touch his hand, a soft, searching look her face. The pads of her fingers were light as butterflies, but her eyes weighed on his chest like stones. His lofty proclamations rang hollow, and he swallowed a sudden dryness in his throat.

"Such fine words" she said, quietly. "Is that what you _really_ think?"

He gazed upon her and his voice faltered. The light bathed her in blue and silver and ruby as though it wanted to consume her, make her a part of itself. History was always so hungry for a new saint, a new icon for the hapless to tuck into their bosoms when they are afraid. _He_ wanted her completely, as a prisoner wants his freedom no matter his crime, wordlessly, without reason or recompense.

They deserved her, those meek and superstitious ones. He did not.

Niklaus drew her close, kissing her mouth with as much greed as he'd once taken her blood. Her arms went about his neck and he swallowed her breath. She burned in his embrace like molten glass. He wanted to put his hands beneath her flesh, to calcify there.

"I think I am selfish," he said roughly, his mouth hovering near hers. "I think I am starving. I think, at a single word from you, I would carry you away from here and damn every soul within these walls."

She questioned him no more, like a priest who has obtained the confession they seek. And as he gathered her in his arms, carrying her deeper into the shadows, he thought perhaps there was no difference after all between a pilgrim's and a prisoner's prayer.

An acolyte's and a monster's hunger.

* * *

They hid in the bell tower like nesting birds.

He licked ash and sweat from her shoulders, her jaw, the hollow of her throat. Her mouth circled and touched his own, her tongue wet and sweet as a strawberry between his teeth.

Their limbs were tangled tight together, like they were still scaling some treacherous height. His hands fumbled, his hunger all dizzying and desperate, grasping at her. She pushed with her magic, his back hit the stone floor and, like a cage door swinging open, the breath left his lungs. He remembered those nights of agony when the Hunters rang the bells, over and over, until his teeth chattered inside his skull. After a while, you forgot the limits of your skin and flesh, the bells with their deep waves of sound became every knowable thing, and you were only a vessel into which the tides were pouring, pouring, pouring. He lay poured out now, beneath this wisp of a witch. Her hair was tangled dust and blood, her white garment hanging in shreds. She rose above him like a crescent moon. He plunged inside her, panting like a schoolboy, hips uncouth and overeager. There was in her something infinite. Something that drove you to the edge of madness.

Her voice, breathless and plaintive, made a rosary of his name, "Nik... ahh...Nik, Nik, Nik..."

There was no god watching that could deny her. There was only him, shuddering, shuddering with each beaded syllable.

* * *

Much later, her head pillowed on his shoulder, she said simply, "I suppose I might die in the morning."

"Never."

There was a smile was in her voice when she asked, "Will you build me a chapel too, then?"

With his fingertips, Niklaus counted the pearls of her spine. He rubbed each one like a talisman.

"A cathedral, little witch. You will live, and I will build you a cathedral of their bones."


End file.
